Here’s an important update from GroundSwell2 – a grass roots effort to save FHA Seller-Financed Downpayment Assistance:
Downpayment Assistance = Economic Impact
Downpayment assistance (DPA) programs in the U.S. had a major beneficial impact on the economy last year, creating $38.6 billion in revenues, 235,000 jobs, and $4.6 billion in total tax revenues, according to an economic-impact study done by two well-respected California economists, Dr. Robert Waste and Dr. Robert Fountain.
Some highlights of their research:
- More than 200,000 new and existing homes were sold last year with DPA. (The research covered the 12 months from December 2007 through November 2008.) Roughly 40% of all loans originated by the Federal Housing Administration used DPA.
- Nehemiah’s DPA program helped families purchase more than 78,000 new and existing homes last year. More than 25% of those sales were on foreclosed homes, effectively taking them off the market.
- About 40% of the borrowers were households headed by minorities and more than one-third were headed by females.
- Of 235,000 new jobs created last year, 195,000 came from new-home construction and the rest from new-home sales. DPA also accounted for $4.6 billion in total tax revenues last year.
Support H.R. 600
The Waste/Fountain Study supports the passage of H.R. 600 – FHA Seller-Financed Downpayment Reform Act of 2009, a bi-partisan bill introduced by Representative Al Green (D-TX). Reformed DPA will play a key role in generating homeownership at no cost to U.S. government or taxpayers, according to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report.
Send a letter to your elected officials in support H.R. 600 and DPA.
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I like the fact that the CBO report says that this valuable program will not cost the taxpayers any money. That’s refreshing!